appointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last; and I blamed my impertinent spirit of almsgiving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness; and above all, I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, goodfor-nothing, old gray impostor. Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline has gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, “Whether, supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flaggellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?" I forget the decision. His sauce should be considered. Decidedly a few bread crumbs done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them or make them stronger than they are-but consider, he is a weakling—a flower. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, poet and prose writer, born at Warwick, England, in 1775; died at Florence, Italy, in 1864. He lived much of the time in Italy, his English home being at Bath. His works make a long list, the most noteworthy productions "Savonarola and the Prior of St. Mark," "Count Julian," The Pentameron," and "The Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen." 66 IMAGINARY CONVERSATION BETWEEN SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AND LORD BROOKE (From "Imaginary Conversations") Brooke. I come again unto the woods and unto the wilds of Penshurst, whither my heart and the friend of my heart have long invited me. Sidney. Welcome, welcome! And now, Greville, seat yourself under this oak, since, if you had hungered or thirsted from your journey, you would have renewed the alacrity of your old servants in the hall. Brooke. In truth I did so: for no otherwise the good household would have it. The birds met me first, affrighted by the tossing up of caps, and I knew by these harbingers who were coming. When my palfrey eyed them askance from their clamorousness, and shrank somewhat back, they quarrelled with him almost before they saluted me, and asked him many pert questions. What a pleasant spot, Sidney, have you chosen here for meditation! a solitude is the audience-chamber of God. Few days, very few in our year like this: there is a fresh pleasure in every fresh posture of the limbs, in every turn the eye takes. Youth, credulous of happiness, throw down It sometimes requires a stout push, and sometimes a sudden resistance in the wisest men, not to become for a moment the most foolish. What have I done? I have fairly challenged you, so much my master. Sidney. You have warned me; I must cool a little, and watch my opportunity. So now, Greville, return you to your invitations, and I will clear the ground for the company; youth, age, and whatever comes between, with all their kindred and dependencies. Verily we need few taunts or expostulations, for in the country we have few vices, and consequently few repinings. I take especial care that my laborers and farmers shall never be idle. In church they are taught to love God, after church they are practised to love their neighbor; for business on work-days keeps them apart and scattered, and on market-days they are prone to a rivalry bordering on malice, as competitors for custom. Goodness does not more certainly make men happy, than happiness makes them good. We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity, for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over; the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual. Brooke. You reason justly, and you act rightly. Piety, warm, soft and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace, is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much; her vitality faints under rigorous and wearisome observances. Sidney. Desire of lucre, the worst and most general country vice, arises here from the necessity of looking to small gains. It is the tartar that encrusts economy. Brooke. Oh, that anything so monstrous should exist in this profusion and prodigality of blessings! The herbs are crisp and elastic with health; they are warm under my hand, as if their veins were filled with such a fluid as ours. What a hum of satisfaction in God's creatures! How is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest? Sidney. Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears; compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle; they have more enjoyment in their one summer than the elephant in his century. Brooke. Are not also the little and lowly in our species the most happy? Sidney. I would not willingly try nor overcuriously examine it. We, Greville, are happy in these parks and forests; we were happy in my close winter-walk of box, and laurestinus, and mezereon. In our earlier days did we not emboss our bosoms with the crocuses, and shake them almost unto shedding with our transports? Ah, my friend, there is a greater difference both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year than in the conditions of men: yet the healthy pass through the seasons, from the clement to the inclement, not only unreluctantly, but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst will soon finish, and the best begin again anew; and we are all desirous of pushing forward into every stage of life excepting that alone which ought reasonably to allure us most, as opening to us the Via Sacra, along which we move in triumph to our eternal country. We may in some measure frame our minds for the reception of happiness, for more or for less; but we should well consider to what port we are steering in search of it, and that even in the richest we shall find but a circumscribed and very exhaustible quality. There is a sickliness in the firmest of us, which induces us to change our side, though reposing ever so softly; yet, wittingly or unwittingly, we turn again soon into our old position. God hath granted unto both of us hearts easily contented; hearts fitted for every station, because fitted for every duty. What appears the dullest may contribute most to our geinus; what is most gloomy may soften the seeds and relax the fibers of gaiety. Sometimes we are insensible to its kindlier influence, sometimes not. We enjoy the solemnity of the spreading oak above us; perhaps we owe to it in part the mood of our minds at this instant; perhaps an inanimate thing supplies me while I am speaking with all I possess of animation. Do you imagine that any contest of shepherds can afford them the same pleasure that I receive from the description of it; or that in their loves, however innocent and faithful, they are SO free from anxiety as I am while I celebrate them? The exertion of intellectual power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us greatly more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly more than their enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of generations; we have our sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look at the summits of all the trees around us, how they move, and the loftiest the more so; nothing is at rest within the compass of our view except the gray moss on the park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared to the living one. |